


Since We Last Spoke

by Manyobsessions



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, M/M, i dont think i mentioned that in the notes but u should come yell at me on there, i think, i write most of this drunk, motivate me to keep going with this, my tumblr is fun-is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-26 06:34:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manyobsessions/pseuds/Manyobsessions
Summary: The missing two years.Marvin accepts new people into his life, and things slowly start to turn around.





	1. "I Hate Strawberries."

There were stains in the ceiling that Marvin hadn't noticed before, bleeding out from each corner of the room. Two of the bulbs had blown in their fixtures, and the phone was still hanging off the hook by its wire. The coffee table was littered with junk mail, bottles, and a permission slip that Jason had brought home the day before.

It had been just over a month since everything had seemed so achievable. He could have had it all, had he just kept trying. But instead, he'd suggested chess, and now he was lying on his expensive leather couch, noticing the stains in his ceiling plaster. The fire in him was gone, totally snuffed out, like someone had doused him in water and left him in orange embers with no air and no fuel.

The doorbell rang, drilling holes through his skull and into his brain. He pressed a cushion into his face in an attempt to soften the ache in his forehead. The only people who rang his doorbell these days were door to door salesmen peddling revolutionary cooking utensils and missionaries telling him to turn to Christ. In both cases he told them they were full of shit, he didn't need Jesus or a swanky new potato peeler, he was Jewish and he needed a rest.

The doorbell rang again. Marvin had found that people usually rang three times before giving up and pushing a flier under the door. Unless it was Mendel and Trina, in which case they'd start knocking obnoxiously, which soon became more annoying than the doorbell, and Marvin would have to haul himself off the couch and open the door to get them to stop.

The doorbell rang a third time. Marvin watched the crack between his door and the floor for a flier, waiting for these people to go away.

It rang a fourth time, and Marvin was thrown. No one ever rang his doorbell four times consecutively. Useless people rang three times, and Jason just shouted at him through the door until he opened it.

"Hello?" A grating voice came from the other side of the door and the bell rang again. That was five rings. Could they not take a hint? Could they not move on and talk at some other depressed old man through a locked door?

Marvin groaned at their persistence, muttering a string of expletives as he stumbled through his head rush to the front door, opened it a crack and blinked out into the brightly lit hallway of his building.

"Yes?" He croaked.

In front of him stood two women, probably slightly younger than him, one black, one white, both smiling with disgusting sincerity.

"Hi, we just moved in next door. I'm Charlotte, and this is Cordelia." The black girl moved in for a handshake. Marvin was already inching the door closed. The women's positivity was corrosive and the hallway was too bright, and Marvin was angry at the world and every despicable and unfortunate creature who inhabited it.

"I brought you cookies! I'm a caterer, so it's kind of my thing." The white girl's voice was high-pitched and whiny, like a cheese grater against the front of Marvin's brain. She held out a plate full of dubiously coloured circles of dough with a smile that quivered with enthusiasm.

Marvin looked down at the cookies, which were presented on the kind of cheap plate from Target that Whizzer used to have. "Those look like shit," he announced, and closed the door.

He turned back to the sad, grey, expensive living room, with the blinds drawn shut and the lights dimmed, and collapsed back down onto his couch to watch the stains spread across the ceiling.

-

"Hey, asshole!" A voice cut across the lobby as Marvin sifted through his mail a couple of days later. He kept shuffling envelopes and ignored it. "I'm talking to you, Maroon Hoodie." The voice was coming closer, and Marvin sighed and locked his mailbox back up, turning around to face Charlotte as she reached him.

Her face was flushed and her eyes were sparking with some kind of angry electricity. Marvin crossed his arms over his chest and gestured for her to lay it on him.

"Listen, old man, I don't know what your damage is, but you cannot just close the door in someone's face like that. That was so rude." She prodded her finger into his shoulder and he raised an eyebrow. "Not to mention the way you spoke to Delia! That was so uncalled for; she's a great cook! And she takes a lot of pride in that so what you said really had an impact, you ass."

She took a step back, her eyes still crackling like lightning. Marvin leaned backwards against the wall and kept blank eye contact. The silence stretched between them, tense like a spring holding too much weight.

"Are you even going to try to apologise?" Charlotte exploded.

"I have a feeling you're not done." Marvin replied monotonously, adjusting the sleeve of his hoodie.

"No, you know what? I'm not." Charlotte started, voice as electric as her eyes, and Marvin sighed, steeling himself for yet another rant against his personality. "I came down here to give you a chance to apologise, on the off-chance that you're not actually an asshole, and all you can do is raise your eyebrow at me like I'm dog shit on the bottom of your shoe. You are so rude, and you have no reason to be. Delia spent all of yesterday slaving to improve her cookies and I had to taste every one of them, and it's your fault! And you can't even apologise!"

Charlotte broke off, breathing heavily. Marvin shoved his hands back into his pockets.

"So," he started, not breaking eye contact, "as fun as it was to have you point out every immediately noticeable flaw in my personality, I'm a busy man, so are we done here?"

Charlotte scoffed. "Busy, right. I've never seen you leave your apartment or have guests over. Busy, my ass."

Marvin rolled his eyes and pushed himself off the wall, shouldering past her on his way to the elevator.

"Wait a second." Charlotte, seemingly, was not done. Marvin rolled his eyes and pressed the button. "Delia wants you to come to dinner tonight. That means you're coming to dinner tonight."

"I can't, I have a... Thing." Marvin lied pathetically, getting into the elevator. "Busy man, and all that."

"Cancel it. You're going to appreciate Cordelia's cooking." Her tone left no room for argument. "I'll expect you at seven, and if you don't come around yourself, I will drag you out of your flat. And what the fuck is your name?"

Something about being ripped into, insulted and pulled apart and twisted, was achingly familiar and disarming.

"Marvin Levine." Marvin said, because he missed the feeling.

"Marvin. See you later." She glared at him until the elevator doors slid closed between them.

And so, hours later, Marvin found himself sitting at her dining table. The clock was ticking nervously on the wall, rhythmically announcing each second that passed in silence. Charlotte and Cordelia sat on one side of the table, watching Marvin stab at his salad with his fork opposite them.

When Charlotte had dragged him in, he had ignored Cordelia's polite 'hello!', and proceeded to tell her just what he thought of her wallpaper, and how it clashed with the upholstery, so the dinner was really doomed from the start. He was also refusing to eat the salmon that Cordelia had cooked, claiming it looked 'unsettlingly blue', and was only eating the salad. Charlotte had muttered something about how he probably sustained himself on self-importance alone, and was glaring at him with an intensity that would have incinerated a less stubborn person on the spot.

Cordelia was watching him with an intrusive curiosity that was scratching at his last nerve. She'd also gone and put strawberries in her salad. Whizzer had used to put strawberries in his salads. It had always been delicious.

"I hate strawberries." He declared.

Charlotte scoffed and rolled her eyes. Cordelia smiled tightly and touched Charlotte's knee to try and restrain her from making an enemy out of their new neighbour.

"So, Marvin, what's your day job?" Cordelia tried.

"Advertising." Marvin pushed a piece of cucumber to the edge of his bowl and watched it slide back down to the centre. "Boring question."

Cordelia's smile faltered, which Marvin counted as a point in his favour. "Okay," she powered on, plastering her sickening smile back onto her face. "Well, I'm starting a catering company, which I'm really excited about." Marvin raised a cynical eyebrow, looking pointedly between her and the blue salmon. "And Charlotte's a doctor."

"Great," was Marvin's sarcastic response.

"She got a promotion recently, so we bought a new place together." Cordelia tangled her fingers with Charlotte's as she forced her way through the conversation. "Isn't that great?"

Marvin was caught looking at their hands. Charlotte's thumb was absently stroking over Cordelia's knuckles. It twisted his stomach into cold knots. "Sure." He said, and stabbed his strawberries. They bled red juice around the prongs of his fork.

The electric roar in Charlotte's eyes faded to a hum as Cordelia asked about her day. Her lips softened into a smile and her shoulders eased into relaxation. Marvin accidentally kicked her shin under the table. Accidentally.

Charlotte left after a while, swiping Marvin's half-empty bowl from underneath his fork to wash it up, leaving Marvin alone with Cordelia and a ticking clock. She was watching him as though he were a wild animal, and he was slouching in his seat, hands clasping his knees, glaring at the second hand in its halting vagabondage around the face.

"Marvin, what's wrong?" Cordelia's voice rang clear across the table.

Marvin scowled at the clock. "Nothing's wrong."

"Really?" Cordelia tilted her head and regarded him with that uncomfortable intrigue and it was making Marvin's stomach turn. It made him feel as though she'd find out everything about him, given enough time. "Because if there's nothing wrong, then you really are just an asshole."

Marvin's hands clenched into fists on his knees. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Cordelia's voice was still gratingly soft.

"Yeah, well, maybe you're right." Marvin hissed and turned to face her, eyes yellow and fierce. "Maybe I am just an asshole. Hell, everyone else seems to think so."

When Cordelia spoke next, her voice was measured and gentle. "I don't think you are. I think you're hurting."

Marvin snarled and stood up from the table, fists quivering at his sides. "You don't know me," he growled, like a threat, and left the apartment.

Once he was back in his own living room, he knocked back three shots of whiskey before smashing his glass against the wall. Fucking strawberries.

-

That Friday, at seven o'clock, Marvin opened the door to Jason. He cracked a smile at his son.

"Hey, kid, come on in." Marvin ruffled Jason's hair and pulled him through the door by his shoulder.

"Take my bag, it's heavy," Jason swept into the apartment, dropping his backpack into his father's hand. "Careful though, my computer's in there."

"Right." Marvin shook his head dazedly as he watched his kid breeze through to the kitchen. They grow up so fast. He shouldered the backpack and turned to close the door, only to find Charlotte spying on him from the hallway. "Can I help you?"

"I didn't know you had a kid, Marvin."

"Yeah, I do." Marvin leaned on the threshold of his apartment. "His name's Jason, he's ten. Great kid."

"Yeah, he seems it." Charlotte turned and started unlocking her own front door, and Marvin felt a jolt of anger down his spine, like lightning.

"What's that supposed to mean?" He snapped.

Charlotte turned back to Marvin with her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "That he seems like a great kid? Calm down, Marvin, not everything is said with malicious intent."

Marvin supposed that had been true once, but it had been a long time since anyone had said something genuinely nice around him. "I'll see you around," he grumbled, and closed the door between himself and Charlotte with a click.

"Yeah, see you around, dick." Charlotte muttered to the empty hallway.

Marvin deposited Jason's backpack in the living room before wandering through to the kitchen to stick frozen pizza in the oven.

"Who was that?" Jason asked from the counter, where he was sitting with his legs swinging off the edge, dipping crackers into a jar of mayonnaise.

"A new neighbour. She just moved in next door. Can you get a plate?"

"Since when do you care about crumbs?" Jason challenged.

"Since they brought rats into my flat and forced me to clean the counters," Marvin answered, knocking Jason's knee with his hip and preheating the oven.

"You sound like Whizzer."

Marvin's blood ran cold, and he felt like he'd fallen through thin ice into deep, black water. "Get a plate." His voice was marble.

Jason watched his father take a shaking breath and walk to the bedroom, closing the door to conceal his neuroticism from sight. He sighed and got a napkin in compromise.

On the other side of the bedroom door, Marvin sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between his knees, and breathed. Whizzer was gone, he reminded himself. Whizzer was gone, and he wasn't coming back, and Marvin was better off without him. Whizzer was manipulative, lawless, reckless, and cruel, and he left chaos in his wake. Marvin was more stable and composed without him. His breathing softened, his muscles loosening, and he lay back on his bed, tracing the swirls in the ceiling plaster with his eyes. Whizzer was gone, and he wasn't coming back, and Marvin was better off without him.

Over a year before, at the very foundation of their dubious relationship, Whizzer had told him to get a plate. They had just screwed in his shitty studio apartment, and Marvin had been ravenous, so was raiding the tiny kitchen for anything edible that wasn't boxed wine or moulding grapes. He found half a loaf of bread and was tearing pieces off when Whizzer, still in bed, yelled at him to "get a plate".

"I've only been here six times, Whizzer, I have no idea where you keep your plates," he had yelled back around a mouthful of bread. Whizzer had groaned in displeasure, drawing a victorious smile to Marvin's face, and stumbled through to the kitchen, rummaging through cupboards clad only in boxers a size too big for him. Marvin's boxers. Marvin's smile had curled into a satisfied grin.

Just as Marvin was starting to enjoy the view, Whizzer had put a cheap plastic plate down in front of him on the counter top, taken the bread from between his lips, and put it on the plate. It looked like the saddest thing Marvin had ever seen.

It was like something he'd expect to see in a gallery: a stale chunk of wholemeal bread crumbling in the centre of an off-white square plate with curved edges from Target. Titled something in Italian or French. Cyanotype print, 1979.

"I need to get you some new plates, these are too ugly for you." Marvin had taken the plate anyway, and gone to sit at the table.

"Well, if you're offering, I also need some film and a year's worth of rent money." Whizzer had reached over and wrapped one of Marvin's curls around his finger as he ate.

Marvin had rolled his eyes but leaned into his touch, sighing contentedly. He had known that Whizzer was leering down at him, laughing at his softness, his vulnerability, but he hadn't cared. He'd never felt so good in his life, and he wasn't going to let a strange man's malignancy ruin the high that he'd been chasing for his entire, miserable marriage.

Ah shit, the marriage.

He had tugged himself out of Whizzer's grasp and started towards the door, tugging his shoes on as he went. "Right, well. See you on Thursday?"

"That depends."

Marvin had hummed, "it always does," as he opened the front door.

"Say hi to your wife for me," Whizzer had drawled with a salacious smile, wrapping a hand around Marvin's wrist.

"You know I won't," Marvin had matched his smile. Whizzer had tugged him back and kissed him goodbye in a way that ensured Marvin would be back, with the front door open and in front of his whole apartment complex. Marvin had contemplated falling back into bed for another round.

But Whizzer had pushed him across the threshold by the waist, with a whispered "go buy me some plates," and shut the door.

Their whole thing had been fucked from the outset. Marvin, sighing and drawing swirling patterns on his bedsheets, knew that it wasn't worth clinging onto. It was sex and fights, power plays and bite marks, immaturity and arrogance. It could have been wonderful, but it wasn't. And so he needed to let it go.

Why couldn't he let it go?

-

He saw Charlotte again a few days later, on the balcony next to his. It was warm, and the city was undulating with heat beneath them.

"Hey, Charlotte," he said, folding his paper.

"Hey, Marvin," she replied, hesitantly, unfolding her own paper. She sounded wary, like she was in an enclosure with a constrictive snake.

Marvin didn't look at her when he said "I've been a prick to you and Cordelia, haven't I?".

When he turned to face her, her eyes were electric again. "Yeah, a little bit," she deadpanned.

"I didn't mean to be. I've had some stuff going on, and being polite kind of took a backseat." Marvin ran a hand through his tangled hair and Charlotte softened a little. She knew what stress could do. "She's right, you know. I am an asshole." Marvin was looking down into the heat waves in the concrete below.

"Who's right?"

"Cordelia. She said I was an asshole that night you had me over for dinner. She was right."

Charlotte watched his face, seeing something sad in the blue under his eyes, in the curve of his mouth, the crease between his eyebrows. "Do you want to come over and talk it out? I have beer. Dee's out."

Marvin turned his head sharply to look at her, genuinely shocked by the invitation. "Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks."

An hour later, when Charlotte's coffee table had become cluttered with empty bottles, Charlotte asked, "Why don't you live with Jason's mom?". They'd spoken about everything, from Charlotte's career to Marvin's college life to how Jason was doing in school and then back again, skirting around anything too emotionally charged. Until now, apparently.

"Trina? We divorced." Marvin replied simply, gesturing at his lack of a wedding ring.

"Ah," Charlotte hummed, taking a long drink from her bottle.

"Yeah." Marvin nodded in the sage way that only those bordering on drunk can pull off. "It wasn't very friendly. She's okay now, though." He sipped his beer and spoke words, loudly and without restraint, as they came to him. "You know who she's getting married to next May? My old shrink. Doctor Weisenbachfeld. What a prick."

"You still like her?"

"God, no." Marvin snorted at the sincerity on Charlotte's face. "Never did."

Charlotte's eyebrows drew together. "Why were you married?"

"Jason." Marvin shrugged, picking at the label on his bottle. "She got pregnant pretty much as soon as we started dating."

"That sucks."

It kind of did. But, it had given him the picture-perfect nuclear family he had always needed, and some stability for a while. It was also the worst move he'd ever made, making him angry and bitter, self-destructive and destructive of others, but he didn't like to think about that too much. It was almost a decade of his life that he'd have to regret if he acknowledged that it was a mistake. He tried to change the course of the conversation. "We love him though."

Charlotte nodded over the rim of her bottle. "Why'd you divorce?"

"She caught me groping another man's ass in the den at four in the morning." Charlotte's mouth fell open. "Yeah, I'm an asshole." Marvin pressed forward, drunk and miserable. The heavy blackness in his chest was leaking out through his mouth and oozing into every corner of the room. "Such an asshole. I cheated on my wife with a man, divorced her for that man, and then messed it all up so badly that he left me." His voice cracked and his mouth ran dry at each admission. He blinked back the ache that he had refused to let himself feel, trying desperately to contain the blackness, curling into himself. "God, I never realised what I had, and then," Charlotte's hand was rubbing his back and his bottle was shaking in his hands, "he left me."

The pathetic fences that Marvin had built to try and contain his breakdown shattered in three words, and Marvin dropped his bottle, covering his face with his hands and forcing his tears back into place.

"He never even loved me." His body was heaving with dry breaths that tugged painfully on his bones, and his beer was soaking into the carpet, and Marvin's heart was breaking all over again.

And all Charlotte could do was pull Marvin into an awkward side hug, stroke his hair, and tell him he wasn't that much of an asshole.


	2. "I Can Spell Head, Dad."

  
Marvin woke up the next day with a dry mouth and a head rush that wouldn't fade, his brain sloshing around inside his skull. He called in sick to work, half-heartedly faking coughs, and went back to bed.

He woke up again a few hours later, still feeling like his tongue was coated in sandpaper and his head had been pumped with lead, squinting against the sunlight breaking its way through the slats in his blinds. Pulling his sheets up to his chin, he let his head settle, and let it roll back to the previous night. He had spilt beer on Charlotte's carpet like a college kid, he recalled. He had sobbed into her shoulder like a teenager. And then he had come home and passed out like a child.

He remembered everything a little too clearly for his liking.

His ceiling kept swirling, no matter how still he held his head, like his thoughts were escaping through his eye sockets and twisting together, taunting him from beyond his mind. One thought was self-deprecation, swept up along with the thought on his own immaturity. There was gratitude, which had the same soft tones as Charlotte's apartment. Drifting in the background were thoughts of longing and regret, leading each other in endless, graceless loops. Then there was a fleeting thought on isolation which flashed red even when Marvin closed his eyes. When he opened them, his mind had calmed slightly, the ceiling only swaying slightly above him. His thoughts had settled, and in the foreground was apathy. As it should be. As it always was.

After a lunch of stale cereal and a small mountain of ibuprofen, Marvin put on his sneakers and went next door. Cordelia probably still thought he was an asshole, and needed to be put right.

She opened the door with a smile that splintered when she saw him. She had flour under her eyes.

"Hey, Cordelia-" Marvin started.

"You need milk? Sugar?" She cut in, brushing hair off her face and trying her best to keep smiling.

"No, I... That's not why I'm here." Marvin sighed. "I've been a prick and I didn't mean to be. I wanted to reintroduce myself, and maybe we can start over. So, hi. I'm Marvin." He held out his hand.

"Cordelia," she answered, tight and clipped. She shook his hand.

"Okay, well, I'll see you around." Marvin stuffed his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching around his ears, and turned back to his apartment.

"Do you want to come in? I'm baking and could use a taste-tester."

Marvin was caught off-guard. "Sure." Dazed because of residual alcohol in his system and at how quickly he was making friends, Marvin followed her to her kitchen. Who knew that making an attempt to be a decent person could change the way he was treated so drastically?

"You know Charlotte told me everything you said last night, right?" Cordelia mentioned as she stirred melting chocolate.

"Oh."

"She thought you were homophobic before that." She cracked a half-smile and Marvin snorted. "She doesn't think you're much of an asshole anymore, though."

"I didn't tell her everything." The confession had left Marvin's mouth before it had even flickered across his conscious mind. "She'd change her mind if I did."

Cordelia gestured for Marvin to stir her chocolate and she moved over to start chopping cauliflowers. "Care to share?" Marvin hesitated at her question, remembering her intrusive stare from the night they'd had dinner. She seemed like the kind of person to crave secrets and seek them out like truffles, collecting them like trophies. "Come on, Marvin. I'm letting you taste my baking, you owe me a few secrets."

Marvin personally felt that he was being forced to taste her baking rather than allowed to; she was putting cauliflower in brownies. But he elected to keep that thought private. "You'd hate me," he said instead.

"I don't like you much at the moment. You insulted my cookies and my strawberries and got beer on my carpet."

"I actually do like strawberries, they just reminded me of someone I'd rather forget." Marvin dipped a finger into the chocolate and Cordelia swatted at his hand.

"Don't change the subject." She chastised him. "I want to know why you're an asshole."

"I really don't want to talk about it." He licked his finger clean, and the chocolate was too sweet and smooth on his tongue.

Cordelia shrugged and started on the next head of cauliflower, continuing her rhythmic chopping. "It would probably be good for you."

"You'd hate me," he repeated.

"It takes a lot to get me to hate someone, Marvin." Her knife collided with her chopping board like a metronome, counting the beats of Marvin's hesitation.

His confessions were burning at the tip of his tongue, and had been for weeks. He still hadn't spoken them out loud, or made a move to atone for them. Maybe this was his opportunity to get it off his chest and move on. As though none of it had even happened, or left a scratch on his heart or a crack in his wall.

"I hit my wife when she sent me a wedding invitation." Cordelia's chopping halted and the gas cooker flickered. "Well, ex-wife, but the sentiment's the same. My son was in the room. And moments before that, I had broken up with the only person I've ever loved because he beat me at a stupid game, and I couldn't handle him being in control of himself anymore. How's that? Does that make you hate me?" Marvin finished bitterly, placing the wooden spoon down on the counter with his biceps shaking with tension he could barely control.

Cordelia was looking at him with her eyebrows drawn together. She said nothing.

"I thought so."

Marvin left.

He spent the rest of the week in isolation, burning out on his own, going to work alone every morning, coming home alone every evening, and spending a solitary night in front of the television. He went to Jason's first ever baseball game that Friday evening and wished he hadn't, because Jason had been terrible, and he'd had to engage in stilted small-talk with other parents whilst Trina and Mendel exchanged transparent pleasantries with him in intermissions between their continued silent treatment. It was like being boxed out of his own life.

So he went home with darkly smouldering charcoal in his chest, and tried to resurrect the flames with a bottle of Jack Daniels. It hadn't worked, he was just having trouble reigning in his thoughts when they got out of hand, and the dust motes had become more colourful and left trails like meteorites as they danced in front of the television screen. Jason had gone to a friend's house for a sleepover. Which was fine. Marvin took a burning drink from his bottle.

Friday nights had used to be perfect. He would come home to dinner, made by Trina, watch television and play chess, and put his kid to bed. Or later, he would come home to dinner, made by Whizzer, fight and screw and let off steam, and fall asleep in the arms of someone he loved. Who never loved him back. Which was fine. The whiskey stung his throat.

The doorbell rang and Marvin hauled himself up off the couch. The room spun around him slightly, but the vertigo was strangely comforting; a real feeling in his head, something to focus on. The doorbell rang again and Marvin shook the blur out of his vision and stumbled to the front door.

Charlotte stood on the other side, fiddling with her sleeve. Her eyes were crossed with red veins like lightning, glowing brightly, and her body was curled inwards. She looked like a wreck.

"What's up?" Marvin slurred.

"You got any spare alcohol?" She asked in response.

"Uh, sure. Come in." He turned away, leaving the door hanging open, and poured her a glass. She took it silently and sat at one end of the couch. He sat at the other.

A heavy silence pervaded the flat, the air bubbling around Marvin's ears like acid and setting his hands tapping with anxious energy. The quiet burned in the chasm in his chest, filling him with excess energy that he didn't know what to do with. It boiled inside him. His blood got hot, his heart beat faster, his eyes burned. And somehow, he'd become angry with confusion. Why was Charlotte here? Couldn't she sit, drinking her own alcohol, in her own flat? Why wasn't she saying anything? Why didn't anyone tell him anything? His skin flushed.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on?" He cracked, drunk and on fire.

"I lost another patient today." Her voice broke and Marvin's anger evaporated.

"Oh." Oh. Oops.

"Not just any patient though. I lose a patient everyday. Sometimes more." Charlotte's eyes were glassy and her voice was hoarse. "This guy, he was a friend. I thought he was going to get better." She took a rattling breath. "We all thought he was going to get better."

"What did he have?"

"Cancer, we think." She was staring blankly at the television, raising her glass to her lips rhythmically. Marvin watched her refill her glass when it became empty. "L'chaim."

"L'chaim."

A melancholy quiet descended, like a heavy gas, choking out sound. L'chaim, indeed. Charlotte grimaced at the taste of her second glass, and Marvin gazed up at the intersection of wall and ceiling on the opposite side of the room. The air up there was almost darker, heavier, with storm clouds sulking around the lights and darkening the room. Marvin looked outside the window; the clouds there were light grey and low-hanging. The sun had retreated.

"You ever watch someone die, Marv?" Charlotte broke the silence.

He found himself nodding. "My dad died when I was in college."

"You were there?"

"I was there." He kept nodding, like a broken video tape, playing the same action over and over. "It was cancer, too. Pulmonary. The doctors tried to save him, but," he glanced at Charlotte. "There was nothing they could do."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Charlotte kept drinking.

And they made it a regular thing; getting together every so often when Marvin's apartment felt too big, or Charlotte's shoulders were tight because there was so much resting on them. A kind of pseudo therapy session, between neighbours, with alcohol. Marvin felt lighter the morning after each talk they had, and his apartment felt smaller, like it had let out a breath.

Eventually, they started to smile, and then talk about things they were happy about, and then laugh, and finally do away with the alcohol. They watched television together, turning the volume down on crappy sitcoms and making up their own dialogue that had Charlotte falling off the edge of the couch with laughter. They started walking to the subway together in the mornings, stopping for coffee on some numbered street and complaining about the rise of tourism in their city. They talked circles around each other about politics, news, science, their days and families; relaxed, almost... Friendly? Marvin hesitated to use the word, he hadn't had a real friend in years.

"Delia did tell me about all the shit you did, you know?" Charlotte said one night as she was leaving Marvin's flat, laughter still lingering in the creases around her eyes.

"Yeah?" Marvin crossed his arms and leaned away from her.

"Yeah." Charlotte paused in the doorway, shifting her weight between her feet. "I don't hate you for it."

Marvin blinked. She seemed sincere. "Why not?"

Charlotte sighed, running a hand through her hair. "This is going to sound dumb, but you're one of my closest friends. I like you."

Marvin's lungs stuttered like a stalling engine and he struggled for breath. "We're friends?"

"I mean, I think so."

"Okay. Okay. Cool. Friends."

-

Charlotte and Cordelia invited Marvin and Jason over for dinner later in the week, and Marvin accepted, because they were friends, and the four of them sat around the table together, talking. Talking around a table. It was surreal, and it filled Marvin with an overwhelming sense of contentment.

"Cordelia?" Jason piped up.

"Hmm?" Cordelia was shaken from a contemplative trance, and she tore her gaze from Marvin.

"Do you have any more cookies?" Marvin couldn't understand why Jason liked those discoloured piles of dough so much, but Cordelia lit up at his request.

"I think I like your kid more than you, Marvin." She grinned as she headed to the kitchen.

"Everyone likes me more than my father," Jason swung his feet, grinning impishly at Marvin. "Mom and Mendel obviously do, the Cohens do, the Applebaums love me. Even Whizzer said I was smarter and kinder-" Jason paused to take a cookie from Cordelia and tear a chunk out of it. Cordelia looked oddly shocked. "All my teachers like me more."

"Yeah, Jason, we know, you're very popular." Marvin said, and cleared his throat.

"Whizzer Brown?" Cordelia squeaked, and Marvin's head snapped up of its own accord, his heartbeat suddenly running very fast, and his blood suddenly feeling very hot.

"Yeah!" Jason grinned, mouth full of under-baked dough. "That was his name, right, dad?"

Marvin could only grunt, staring slack-jawed at Delia as she stared slack-jawed at Jason.

"Do you know him, Delia?" Jason asked, once he had finished his mouthful.

Delia turned to face Marvin, her expression schooled into neutrality. "He's my friend."

Marvin stared. He could feel his heart beat in his fingertips. As if he hadn't done enough to get Delia to hate him himself, she also had all the gossip Whizzer had inevitably spread to her. Great.

"Can I have a word with you on the balcony, please?" Delia asked.

Marvin drained his wine, squared his shoulders, and followed her out, leaving a very Charlotte and Jason in his wake.

He closed the door behind him and stepped up to the ledge of the balcony, where Cordelia was looking out into the city. The cars were navigating the streets like glowing water droplets down a gridlocked window pane, and their sounds seemed so far away.

"You were the psychotic closet-case he was dating?" She asked, without looking at him, without hardening or softening her tone, and Marvin almost laughed, because that was so Whizzer.

"Is that what he called me?" He asked. Cordelia sighed, and Marvin sighed too. "We were never even dating. He never let me say the word 'dating'."

"You were together for almost a year." Cordelia turned to look at him, a new steel shine to her eyes that forced Marvin to lay himself bare.

"It was just over a year, actually. But he never counted the first month." Marvin twisted his hands together.

"And you thought he didn't love you?"

Marvin snorted. "Are you serious, Delia? Of course he didn't love me." He used me, and I loved him, and that was how it worked. "He made it very clear that he didn't love me."

He turned away from her, leaning his elbows on the ledge and watching the cars. They were stuck in traffic at the far end of their street, all bottled up at the junction because some idiot had parked his truck in the middle of the road. One move and the whole street was suffering. What a moron.

"Do you know how long his longest relationship was, before you?" Cordelia spoke again, tearing Marvin away from the cacophony of car horns and New-York-yelling that made his head pound. And he was back on the balcony, with Cordelia, and the air was warm and light, and the cars were just glowing water droplets.

"No." He answered honestly.

"Four months. He was fifteen." Marvin buried a hand in his hair, closed his eyes against the dark. "He stayed with you. Through a year of your bullshit, he stayed with you. Of course he loved you."

Marvin leaned forwards over the edge of the balcony, looking into the dark city, breathing deeply against the tightness in his chest. His eyes strained against the black and proud neon of New York after dark, and there were no stars. "He screwed other men, Delia. He insulted every aspect of my personality, and appearance. He told me, flat out, repeatedly, that he would never love me." And Marvin had recited this so many times in his head over the past month and a half that he didn't even falter over the last sentence anymore.

"He lied," he heard Cordelia whisper. She put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed spirals into his back. "When he talked about you, he-"

"Don't." Marvin said, because he didn't think he could stand to hear about what he had lost; the dark air was becoming too heavy on his shoulders. He focused on the windows in the skyscrapers and pretended they were stars. Cordelia dropped her hand to her side.

"You broke his heart two months ago, Marvin. I've never seen him so guarded. He won't admit it, to himself or anyone else, but he loved you, and you hurt him." And it didn't matter how gentle her tone was, her words hurt Marvin like barbed wire across a bare chest.

He crumbled in on himself. His hands clutched, white-knuckled, to the hair at his temples. "I've screwed up so badly," he spoke down to the cars below him.

"Yeah." Cordelia responded.

The idiot with the truck pulled out of his unofficial parking spot and the roadblock started to clear.

Over the next month, Marvin built himself a home in the warmth of Charlotte and Cordelia's apartment. He made himself comfortable on kitchen counters, ensconced in baking powder, syrups, multi-purpose flower, and muffin trays. He found solace in the canned laughter that leaked from the TV in the living room into Cordelia's kitchen as Charlotte laughed along, unwinding after work. This was his new family, where he felt safe and comfortable, where he felt his stomach settle after feeling nauseous and whiplashed for too long.

"Can you pass the salt?" Cordelia asked one day in fall when he was sitting on her kitchen counter.

He passed it over and watched, slack-jawed, as she measured out a full cup and added it to her mixture. "We're making crème-brûlée, Dee."

"Yeah?" She smiled down at her weirdly grainy mixture.

"Never mind." He busied himself with organising her recipe folders alphabetically. "Oh, I've been meaning to ask, could you and Charlotte hang out with Jason for a few hours this evening? I don't have time to get a baby-sitter, and I can't ask Trina, she'd get so holier-than-thou. Like she never gets a babysitter." Marvin snapped the first ring-binder closed.

"Sure, we'd be glad to, Jason's great," Cordelia answered, humming around a spoonful of her crème-brûlée mixture, gagging a little as she swallowed it and pouring an ungodly amount of vanilla extract into her bowl to try and repair the damage she'd done. "You have a hot date or something?"

Marvin preened a little, shuffling the pastries folder so that croissants came after Bakewell tarts. "Something like that."

Cordelia gaped at him, eyes sparkling. "Really? Who? Do I know him?"

Marvin closed the pastries folder and hopped off the counter, leaning against it. "Probably not. His name's Mark. I met him when he was walking his dog in the park where Jason plays baseball."

"Trust you to ditch your son to flirt with a pretty boy," Delia reprimanded, but she was smiling.

Marvin gazed into the middle distance, adopting a mock-dreamy expression. "He is very pretty..."

Cordelia threw a handful of flour at him and he grinned, dusting it out of his hair.

She watched him, a proud smile on her face as she remembered the asshole who'd insulted her wallpaper. "I'm happy for you," she affirmed.

"Thanks, Dee," he replied.

Dinner with Mark was nice. He smiled a lot, wide, soft and pretty, and it made his eyes shine in the dim light. His light hair was swept back off his forehead, looking like it was permanently captured in some atmospheric breeze. The food was worth the money, the conversation was pleasant, and Mark invited Marvin upstairs when they arrived at his building. And the sex was nice, too.

"You're late." Charlotte grinned as she opened Marvin's front door to him at ten the next morning.

"Sorry, mom," he grinned back.

"How was it?" Charlotte asked, opening the door further and letting him into his flat.

"I'm coming home at ten the next day, how do you think it was?" He brushed a hand through his hair to disguise his self-satisfied smirk. "Hey, Jason."

"Do you think you'll see him again?" Charlotte asked, following him into the living room where Jason was watching TV.

"I'll give him a call and see what happens," Marvin replied, nonchalantly dropping onto the couch. He thought he'd like to see him again. His smile had sparked a warm comfort in Marvin, and the way he had laughed at every one of Marvin's jokes, regardless of their quality, made Marvin warm to the guy.

"You like him." Charlotte stated, flicking him on the ear.

Marvin scoffed. "We've been on one date, Charlotte."

"You totally like him!" She flicked his other ear.

"Well, he does give excellent H-E-A-D." Marvin conceded.

"I can spell head, dad." Jason piped up from the other end of the couch. "What does that even mean?"

"Nothing, kid. Watch your cartoons."

-

Mark was, indeed, excellent at giving head, as Marvin found out over and over again over the next month. He was light, and fun, and pretty. He cooked dinner and walked his dog and gave Marvin back rubs when he came home from work. He was loud, and always liked to be the focus of a conversation, but he had stars in his eyes when he looked at Marvin, and Marvin could feel the fire rekindling inside him, taking its first breath of air in months and roaring its luminous approval.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this? a fic where Marvin dates,, someone?in the middle two years?? Novel. for real though, sorry it's not whizzer, you're gonna have to wait for him. anticipation makes it sweeter, or something. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! kudos water my crops, comments clear my skin


End file.
